Line4Line, Knock Knock Children’s Museum,  the East Baton Rouge Parish Public Schools, and the East Baton Rouge Parish Public Library join forces to bring over 2700 children’s books that celebrate diversity to all East Baton Rouge Parish public and charter elementary schools.

These books have been generously donated by The Conscious Kid organization, an education, research, and policy organization based in Southern California dedicated to equity while supporting organizations, families, and educators in disrupting racism. This past spring Conscious Kid raised over 1 million dollars to establish an Anti-Racist Children’s Book Education Fund providing this collection of books to over 3000 Title 1 educators throughout the United States.

This project aims to create greater access to books that support essential conversations about race, racism, and resilience. These books affirm students from Black and Brown communities, while also empowering youth from all backgrounds to take action against racism. There is considerable research showing that empowering representation, paired with content that specifically names and addresses race and racism, have positive academic and social outcomes for students of all races. Children’s books are one of the most practical and effective tools for initiating these critical conversations with children and can also be used to model what it means to resist and disrupt oppression.

Children and families, as well as the wider community not only need to know what individual, systemic, and internalized racism looks like, they need to know what they can do about it. This book collection is also available to purchase from Conscious Kid’s BookShop for those wishing to add titles to their home libraries or to donate to schools outside of the East Baton Rouge Parish Public School System. 

This webpage is designed as a resource and will be updated regularly. Each tab below includes links with more information on this project. We invite you to explore and welcome feedback.

Activity Kits – To create greater access to the activities Knock Knock Children’s Museum has developed for this project, teachers  can request a classroom set of consumable materials in the event their school does not have funds to provide the materials. Click here for more info.

School & Community Group Visits – The Line4Line team is excited to visit students in a classroom as well as a community group setting to read a book and lead an activity developed by Knock Knock Children’s Museum. Click here for more info.

Author Event – The East Baton Rouge Parish Public Library present a virtual book event with author Derrick Barnes and C. Gordon James the duo behind “I Am Every Good Thing” and “The Crown” on Thursday March 18th at 9am. This FREE program is open to schools and community members – click here to register for this exciting event!